Apple assigned outside antitrust monitor to watch over e-books business

New York Judge Denise Cote on Wednesday assigned Apple a third-party monitor to ensure compliance with federal antitrust laws, one result of the U.S. Department of Justice's successful case against the company over e-book price fixing.

Judge Cote's order named former DOJ Inspector General and federal prosecutor Michael Bromwich as External Monitor at Apple, a position he will keep for a period of two years.

Prior to his role at the DOJ, Bromwich most recently served as the first director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a body created in response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Also of note, Bromwich served as an independent monitor to the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia in 2002 and was one of three federal lawyers in the U.S. case against Oliver North.

As noted by CNET, the two-year term is far less than the five-year injunction Apple was handed as part of the July ruling. The company is currently barred from joining i any "most-favored-nation" clauses with e-book publishers, as well as any content provider.

For its part, Apple said during the trial post-trial proceedings that an external monitor was unnecessary and would cause undue burden for the company, but Judge Cote disagreed, saying that Bromwich's presence is a result of "blatant" antitrust violations.

In July, Apple was found guilty of colluding with five major book publishers to fix the price of e-books sold on the iBookstore. When handing down her ruling, Judge Cote promised a "light" injunction against Apple's business. Both parties made concessions on the final terms for a remedy, with Apple agreeing to stagger negotiations with book publishers, while the DOJ trimmed its injunction demand from ten years to five.

So basically Apple is now allowed to undercut any competitor just as Amazon does. So much for maintaining some semblance of a competitive e-book market. I predict in a couple of years there will be only two ebook distributors in the world, Apple and Amazon.

Apple should just give away 5 ibooks for every iPad purchase - including text books.

Disclaimer: The things I say are merely my own personal opinion and may or may not be based on facts. At certain points in any discussion, sarcasm may ensue.

Put this guy in a janitor's closet (with no offense meant to janitors), and circumscribe every iota of his oversight to only what is absolutely, totally relevant to iBooks. Every spare lawyer at Apple should spend the first few months of his job negotiating and dotting every "i" and crossing every "t" regarding what he can and cannot do there.

So, let me get this straight, this guy ensuring "compliance" is associated with the gang of thugs who persecuted Apple as part of their shakedown racket? Talk about blatant conflict of interest. Literally, the fox is guarding the henhouse here.

Apple needs to start paying off the politicians' demands for bribes, or this kind of persecution is going to continue.

This is nothing more than a shakedown racket....

And when is the special prosecutor going to be appointed for Cotes corruption trial?

Originally Posted by lightknight
It's not communism, it's the result of capitalism: plutocratia. Here, the winner is Amazon.

No, in capitalism the government does not have the power to dictate who wins or loses. Only the market does.

When the government dictates who wins or loses, that's fascism. Fascism is an ostensibly capitalist system controlled by a government with unlimited power (and it usually results in tyranny / dictatorships, etc.)

In communism all industry is owned by the government. In socialism, major industries are owned by the government. In capitalism, no industries are owned or controlled by the government.

Kick Uncle Al off the board, he obviously x-VP brings no help to the table!

This is a good point. What's his purpose for being on the board if he can't keep the goose stepping thugs at bay? Obviously, as he's never run a successful business, he has no business value. His only value is political, so why can't Apple start demanding he earn it?